Truest Self

We read many thoughts and suggestions about being our best self.

But what is that? How do we know? And, goodness, it sounds exhausting. It sounds like work.

I want to offer a radical idea. When we are our truest, it comes with ease. It is not work.

Truest Self.

Now, there is a concept to engage. Best implies competition, evaluation, judgment. It implies that I’m not my best now, and how will I ever know when I’ve achieved that?

Truest Self.

This is a concept, an idea, a truth. It is the unveiling of who you were created to be. This is determined by you. Not by culture, family, age, belief system. It is determined by you. “Finding Myself” is a thing. But not because you’ve gone out to the streets and are lost. It is more like the environment going ice skating as a group and you have chosen to be the coat pile. Everyone else is out there having fun and there you are, underneath the pile of coats that don’t even belong to you, protecting something so no one rips anyone off.

But you are the one being ripped off. When we make our self determinations based on

• cultural trends (if I just learn to like bourbon or a hoppy IPA),

• religious shoulds (love Jesus/Allah/Buddha enough),

• professional practices (well, everyone is doing it)

We set ourselves up for moveable targets of success. The strongest is the material markers of success and self: car, house, vacations, clothing, etc. These are fine material things. But they do not point to who you are and why you are and even how you are.

So who are you? Who do you say that you are? What are your own lists of “I am”s? What words of strength do you attribute to yourself? When you feel yourself being taken over by a stronger personality, what is it you’d really like to say or do? These are all such important clues. Not toward a narcissistic self protectionism.

But a way toward the truest you.

As I see and interact with those who have tapped into their truest self, they know when they are choosing and creating life based on their own alignment and when they are aligned with culture or someone/something else. No judgment here. But really, it is work when we fit ourselves into someone else’s mold.

What does your mold look like? The one you have created yourself based on your own interior wisdom? Based on your own sense of truth. Now, here is where the work really is. Satisfying work. Self determining work. Self disclosure. I will tell you that this is not easy. It is hard work. You are pulling up your truth from the dregs of pain, wound, numbness, check-out living. Talk about draining the swamp. Yep. This is what we do. And we do it the rest of our lives, but instead of our whole exteriors being covered in sludge as we spit out the sludge from inside in the beginning, its more like every now and then seeing that we’ve got dog poo on our shoes. Quick clean, but clean we must. The rewards are amazing, full, creative, relieving, easy, and joy-filled.

And here’s a hint:

When we are in our truth, we are always led to the good of the whole. Always. If what we call “our truth” stops with our own well being, then it is not truth. It is likely fear based, insecurity based, other based self protectionism. Or as Brene’ Brown says, we’ve “gold plated our grit” and hang on to our lesser selves like trophies. But it is not our truth. We are all linked together in an organism of humanity and my well being and the meeting of my truest self causes me to look up and see everyone around me. Their well being becomes linked to my own. Love expands the bubble of awareness and compassion leads to understanding. Let go of tragic patterns you’ve always carried and have mistaken as your truest self. See what is being revealed. It is life. Life for you. Life for all. That is how you tell.

In the end, the only thing we are here to do, is to be our truest self. We can trust when we do that, we are meeting the needs of others who are around us in some way. Just as those who are living their truest self impact our well being. We feel it when they walk into a room. We feel it when words or concepts of high vibration are heard or spoken.

May you be a hearer and knower and speaker of your truest self. This is everything as we raise the consciousness of humanity toward an ethic of love, compassion, and linked togetherness.

With you,

Amy

Protracted discernment and transition

I think one of the greatest ways to bring creative and deliberate change to your life is over months. Months and Months.

For example: I began my spiritual direction practice in 2012. It hummed along, building slowly. My growth as an administrator and the practice’s growth as an organic energized being all its own was in tandem. As things increased, I was ready. In February 2017 I was creating a new website. I loved my sweet little Hapax Spiritual Direction website that a friend crafted for me to express my first foray into the professional world. Yet, after 5 years, I was a different spiritual director and my practice was evolving. I was in Daytona Beach on my hotel room balcony when I realized that the website I was creating was for a full time practice. My sole focus. That caused a pause within, and I closed my laptop and just looked out into the surf and sand and broad horizon. It was a bit of a cause for alarm because I loved my full time gig at the seminary. I loved the students and reveled in the learning that I myself underwent each day as I applied myself to tasks I was a rock star at, and those that needed someone else to review before it went live.

I brought 2 people into my circle of awe and discernment; my husband and my business coach. Neither were surprised, both were ready for 100% of this change. So, I sat with it. for months.

Months and Months.

I knew I needed to tell the prez of the seminary at some point. He needed to hear this from me. But I couldn’t do it until I was certain. In September I mentally thought I was ready. But I was waiting for my whole system to say “Go”. That moment came in November. In a private meeting, I knew he knew before I even said anything. My boss was the next person to be told. We sat on things till the first of the year to be sure sure. To be certain. To be absolute. Interestingly, this is almost the exact timeline back in 2001 when I was asking my spiritual director “when do you know its time to leave when things are going well?” And then it was and I knew. Because of the nature of an academic year, I planned to make my leave taking after graduation. It didn’t go quite as planned, but 3 months after graduation, just before the start of a new academic year, I left.

19 months of discernment and decision.

I will say, 6 months into this new and next, that the transition to sole focus on spiritual direction and coaching was only about 2 months. I’m sailing now. Sailing, because I was not afraid to take it slow, to move with the pace of this particular change.

Because I had a spiritual director and coach all along the way, I never felt adrift. I never felt like I was making a mistake. They asked the important questions so that I was not putting off the tough stuff. I went deep into the muck and mire of change whith groovy hip boots on.

We won’t know the length of time for your discernment and transition. It might be 22 months like mine. It might be 2 weeks because tragedy strikes and you have no choice. It can be at your pace, or it can take you over if you are not standing in awakness, ready to take the first step then the next step.

Hey, but that is what I do for folks. I walk with you. Casually or with deliberate goal achievement. But I promise to ask the hard questions so you don’t get caught off guard by what should have been asked in the early months. You don’t have to answer anything until you’re ready, because the energetic workings below our mental engagement goes to work and explores where our brains are not ready to explore.

What big vision do you have? What is the timing of that vision?

With love,

Amy

Pondering AI

Sipping my coffee from a local joint (who sources their coffee beans direct from farmers and roasts those beans themselves) while driving through newly plowed and piled high parking lots, NPR was playing “New York Times Radiohour”. The feature was on AI, Artificial Intelligence. A very earnest scientist was talking about how China and Silicon Valley have the opportunity to work in partnership for the good of humanity everywhere, rather than participating in a race for preeminent AI. He mentioned that when factory jobs, trucking jobs, farm jobs, etc are lost to people as AI takes over, the people will feel a sense of meaninglessness.

And this is what I want to ponder.

it assumes that work, any work, brings meaning to our lives.

Let’s get out ahead of this situation. AI is coming. So what if we subvert the dominant paradigm and have a meaningful blast while we are at it?

What do we truly find meaning in? Human interaction. Interaction with animals. Building things. Planting and growing things.

What if a post human-industrial movement gets us back to one another, back to the earth, back to our own hands for our own meaning making? Not to relive olden days of yore where we only had potatoes to eat. But a vibrant economy of doing and being?

I heard a metaphor a bit later this same day, that likened the human race to a finely woven cloth. When one thread is damaged directly, the whole cloth is indirectly damaged. When one part of the cloth is cared for directly, the whole of the cloth is cared for. I believe wholeheartedly in what I would claim as fact, as well as my strongly held opinion, that the individual must be healthy and that health wafts over to another and another until the whole enterprise is healthy and strong. The more the whole cloth is healthy and strong, then a more singular degradation cannot ruin the whole.

So, be good to yourself. And the whole will benefit. The whole can be strong for when a singular being cannot uphold their part. A circle. A cycle. A meaningful existence.

Seriously, this is what the holy texts all point to. i cannot be escaped unless someone is reading only part of the holy text. The holy text of nature points to this as well. All for one and one for all.

What is yours to be in this wide universe? Be that. Meaning is waiting for us to be……

• bicycle builders

• gardeners

• writers

• poets

• bread bakers

• house cleaners

• artists

• farmers

• storytellers

• house builders

• atheletes

• caregivers

• blacksmiths and nail makers

• home sharers

Let’s put lawns out to pasture, and invite the sheep and goats in. Let’s share resources of community. Invite others to live with you, share garden space.

It is idealistic. For sure. But what is the alternative? Complaining that robots are taking our jobs, as we settle in front of the TV, buying what robots are building, being told what to own, who to be, dismally caged in dark houses, fearful of neighbors. We don’t need the stuff the culture tells us we need. We need to love and be loved. We need to be who we were uniquely created to be. We do indeed need meaning.

The industrial capitalists want nothing more than for the people to buy buy buy all that the robots build and make. What if we don’t? What if we buy what has been made by someone’s hands, with a smile on their lips and a story on the tongue?

Peace and Contemplation,

Amy

Holding the Hope

It is the third week in January….what have you continued to be successful at since your new years resolution making? I’m proud of you for that! Success is hard work, but the sustaining of a new change often indicates the right timing of a thing.

What were you hoping to change but you screwed up the next day? Take note. Not of the screw up, but that something in you is preparing for a change but now isn’t quite the right time.

I think about all the times I’ve said “No More X” Only to put it in my mouth, or spend the money or repeat the old habit in the next breath.

Something….Something inside of me held a hope. And it will continue to hold a hope toward that day when it is the right time.

So, for every resolution made and broken, I say “Alright!”

For every new pattern thwarted by the old pattern, I say “Next Time!”

For every bite of something that our mouth tells us is comfort but our bodies weep from the inflammation, I say “Keep trying!”

Because the next time might be the right time.

Have you put down someone else’s attempts to improve their life? Go and apologize. You were not a truth teller. You were a wet blanket putting out a fire.

Have you derided someone’s vision of themselves that is different from their current situation? Take a good look deep inside because it is likely you who desire the change but lacks the support.

Have you made fun of the Gillette commercials that are supporting a strong masculinity rather than a toxic masculinity? Then you are who the commercials are aimed at.

I stand with you in your personal terror toward change, in your hopelessness that keeps others down, in your pipsqueak of a dream that you can be your best self.

I hear the pip. I see you. Its what I do so you can do you.

Holding the Hope,

Amy

Self Care, revisited

I saw this today

“Self care is hard. It is not just face

masks and bath bombs. It is crying,

getting out of bed, sticking to your

goals, allowing yourself to open up

to others, not staying at home,

getting rid of negative people, Don’t

believe social media’s false

definition of self care.”

I love a good meme, and a powerful sentiment. Let’s get to it and live all the powerful messages out there. But this one, if we think this is the whole picture, will just keep us stuck in our sadness, our pity, our hurt. Here is another go at how this one might read……

Self care is hard. It is not just face

masks and bath bombs. It is crying,

getting out of bed, sticking to your

goals, allowing yourself to open up

to others, not staying at home,

getting rid of negative people. Don’t

believe social media’s false

definition of self care. …….

Do all the things, and then face the issues at root.

Put the face mask on so you can take on your deepest wounds like a warrior.

Cry to give voice-out-loud to what you’ve experienced.

Open up to trustworthy others, telling your most painful secrets so they are no longer secrets.

Heal at the root. Then self care blooms from within.

I believe this with all my heart. I’ve lived it with all my strength. I’ve raged it with all my body. Go for the root, that is where the power to change it all resides.

With you,

Amy

Day 6 No added or refined sugar

Odd that I’ve gotten here. I’ve watched my uber healthy experimenting hubz go without sugar. But me? Nah.

Yet, the other day I was meditating, and a thought wafted up from within. “reduce sugar intake.”

When I get wafts from below, I’m learning that it is from a fuller knowledge system within. It’s like little bubbles burbling upwards into my mind. I can tell when It is from my mind, and it feels different and without the bubbles.

I don’t know about you, but my mind is where my shoulds, oughts, trending graspings, fears, insecurities do a lot of talking. And the mind thinks it is the boss. It thinks it is everything. Because the body, emotions, and soul do not think. They experience. Often in metaphor, sometimes in words, always in truth.

If my mind had conjured a thought like “reduce sugar intake” I would have been successful for about 3 hours, until the next temptation presented itself.

But this is what I think is happening.

Food and I go way back. Food represents being in a type of need. Not physical need, my parents worked hard to make sure we had all we needed. But it represented an emotional need. And I just couldn’t get enough. Mom was a good cook and baker. The lack wasn’t in what she offered and taught us. It was within me. I had an emotional need that was huge.

Fast forward, say 50 years, and you’ve got an adult who has done her work. Still doing her work. Looking forward to 40 more years of doing inner work. And food doesn’t serve me as it once did. I love a good meal, good tastes…you know, the kind where you have to close your eyes, it’s just that good. But now, food does not have a role in my emotional well being. And my body knows it.

By bubbling up the invitation, it was effectively saying, “You’re ready.” Ready to move on. Uplevel. Engage life and myself from a new vantage point.

So it is day 6. I have not had one sugar craving. I’ve had to fight habits. But as soon as I get through the initial stages of the triggers of the habit, I’m fine. What have I done? I am starting with simply not adding sugar or anything akin to sweet. Nor am I eating the obvious things: cookies, those blueberry scones at Roscoe’s that I’m smelling right this second, hot chocolate or IKEA lingenberry jam on my meatballs. For now, I’m not worrying about the added sugar in processed foods because I don’t eat many of those. I’m not worrying about the carb/sugar thing for now. Just taking it simple and drinking my coffee bitter.

What are you feeling right now, reading through this? What is stirring within your within? Is it about food or is it about doing your work of becoming, uncloaking toward your truest self? Seriously, let’s do that together.

With you in bitter and in sweet

Amy

More than good thoughts

January 1, 2019

It will take more than Hope, Prayer, Good Thoughts to step into the new year in a new way.

We must be clear about what it is we want, or others who have a clearer vision will co-opt us into their plans. We’ll end up wondering how we got there and not where we wanted to be.

Hope that is a real thing, and keeps us going in the dark of night, but you have to actually keep going.

Prayer connects us to a transcendent reality that is Sacred. This reality always invites us into the incarnation, which takes flesh, bones, muscle and sweat.

So take action.

Dream those good thoughts into clarity and then act.

Hope for the impossible to be possible, and then act.

Pray without ceasing, with gratitude, and then act.

Act.

Act as if your life depended upon it. For it does.

Act, take a step, make a choice, clear your house, call someone you’ve offended, give money to the poor, step up your game at work so that you are proud of yourself, give up sugar, drink coffee black……

Act in whatever way your soul needs for you to act, so that 2019 is not a repeat of 2018. So that 2019 isn’t entered into without a conscious plan. So that 2019 takes you further than you’ve ever thought.

Act.

With you,

Amy

Big Plans

What are your big plans for this coming year?

Specifically, how will you enlarge your soul knowing with purpose and consciousness?

Maybe…..

• retreat

• do a year of spiritual direction

• do a year of coaching to let loose old habits and build out your own way in the world

• face your scary past

• meditate

• quit your job and join an ashram

• quit your job and go abroad to live and work

• quit your job and find one that allows you to be fully present as yourself with your own unique gifts

• stay in your job, but talk with your boss about reshaping it so that you can maximize your strengths

• leave a marriage

• end friendships

• publish your original writing

• save the planet

What feels sooo big? Too big? Outrageous?

And why won’t you do it?

What do you need to do it?

I don’t have an agenda with these questions. Just asking.

But,

Since we are here asking, tell me, how does your body feel when you read down that list? Is there any one item that set your heart racing? Are there things that shut you down? Did you jump to your own list of possible Big Plans?

I’ve done most of these (except join an ashram and I’m still definitely married), and I’ll tell you, there is a cost. To all of them.

• When I’ve been on retreat, I have to face the fact that I can’t get my mind to settle.

• I’ve done spiritual direction since about 1997 with a few odd years hiatus, and I won’t every be without it again.

• I’ve done 6 months of coaching as part of my program, and it is AMAZING

• I have faced my scary past. And it was an act of putting the last puzzle piece into the picture, and my response was a sigh too deep for words

• I meditate daily, and am blown away by the simplicity of the wisdom that rises from time to time, as well as with the emptiness (in a good way) most of the time

• I would love to live in an ashram for a year, but I have not done this

• My husband and I lived in Puerto Rico for a year while we were in seminary.

• I did quit my job to create a private practice of my own where I get to be fully present and in charge. Gulp! Right on!

• When I was in my job, I was able to give shape to the tasks so that I was working from strength. I am so grateful for my former workplace.

• I will not leave my marriage.

• I have ended friendships or have created safe distance from those who do not see me and seek to manipulate me into fitting into their reality. I love some people best from afar.

• I have published a sweet little Lenten devotional

• I save the planet with each conscious effort to not use her resources wantonly

I didn’t set out to write about what I have accomplished. I didn’t know when I made the original list how I would be able to check check check most of them.

What about you? Forget my list. What is your list of Big Plans. Once you write it, go over it and check what you’ve already accomplished. Then check in with yourself to see how you could not possibly be the old you for having done that thing.

Be awake this coming year, so that you grasp on to the opportunities that surprise you into your next phase. You’ve cleared the fear before, you can do it again.

With you!

Amy

Unpacking a thought on ourselves

Today I had a great conversation with a beloved client who is smart, kind, practical, brilliant. And we talked about our core, that center pole of self that we can come back to when the world feels wonky.

Have you ever watched a video on how to prep for setting a post? Like a post for a fence, foundation, deck? There is work. First we have to know where we are going to set the post. It will need to be in a place that maximizes the strength of the entire deck or fence. Too far a part, and the fence will be wobbly or the deck will bend and bounce from lack of support. Once the hole is dug, concrete is mixed and poured. You can put the post in at that point, and backfill with gravel, or fill the whole thing with concrete and then attache the post on top. Whatever.

The point is, there is prep involved.

When we are doing the work of strengthening our own center pole of being, there is prep. I think one of the things that can the most help is to know our threshold. To know what is too much. And then, back away from that for a comfortable fill. Let’s change metaphors. If we have a cup of coffee filled to the brim, and then try to walk across the room, it will slop over the side. If Midge from the diner comes along with a pot o’ coffee to refill and pours it in without checking with us first, it will overflow. And we’ll need to clean up.

Our norm in life is to be busy. To fill up. To set our post holes too far apart. And then when life comes around with a big breeze, a coffee refill, a tragic trip….we are left unable to contain our own living.

What if….I know this is crazy…..

But what if we learned who we are and lived out of our center pole of being?

For example (this is what my brilliant client and I talked about)

What if we try yoga every day one week, 3x the next week, and 1x the following week. We consider, reflect and note that we do well with just one yoga class a week. There. we’ve set a baseline.

How many committees are you on? What happens when they all meet in one week? What happens when all the 20 page papers are due the last week of the semester? What happens when all the families want to gather for a great meal on Christmas Day?

Know your baseline. Know what is a healthy amount in your container. Live there on the regular so that when the extra things come along, you are only then bumping into your threshold. Life is manageable.

To do this, we have to agree with ourselves that we do not need to be busy to be valid. That we can have spaces in our days and pauses on our calendars and that we are ok and of great value. We do not need to overwork, overspend, overplan.

When I was about to have my first son, I got off of all the extra things I was on. The bell choir director was not happy. But I held firm. I said, “I’ve never had a baby before and I have no idea what I can handle. So my son is the priority.” Once he came along and we lived into being new parents, I found that adding bell choir again was good for me, and what was good for me was good for the baby. I had zeroed out my extras, in order to see what my baseline was.

I continued this practice when moving, or at the birth of a second child, or just when I needed to reset my life. It was a chance to zero out everything, and build from there. Not to just get busy again, but to recognize what I was able to handle and be able to offer my best to the rich choices of my life: parenting, marriage, vocation.

When we’ve done this work, and this is not a thought project that can be figured out over a cup of coffee…this takes weeks and maybe months….we create the space to own our strengths, to claim our way in the world, and to shape that center pole.

All of this effort is to live a mindful life. To journey in a balanced way. To be the creators of our living and create from a knowing of our very souls.

Amy

Enough into Abundance

I have an awkward relationship with the author Brene’ Brown. She has brought into common language the concept of You Are Enough. I applaud this.

I also have caution around this.

Brene’ is coming from a place of perfectionism, from a place within where the narrative is so strong that you must do more, be more, know more, show more, grow more, have more. You don’t. None of us do. We are most certainly enough.

This is a third dimensional, material plane way of thinking. We are 3D people and must operate on the material plane of lawns, cars, meals, homework and soccer games. If this dimension is where you are stuck, then let’s get to work on this notion that more is required of you. They way about this is to find out who you are and match the “enough” to you personally. My enough is going to look different than your enough.

I want to add in the 4th and 5th dimension into this equation. Because this is honestly much more interesting, than managing your schedule or to do list and doing self care with bubble baths.

When we tap into who we are at soul level, our most innate gifts and ways to be in the world, then we move from enough into abundance. It is like discovering we have a bank account that our great grandparents set up for us and has been gathering interest for 80 years and you have a boat-load of money you didn’t know about.

We can stay on the surface of our living, taking cues from a culture that is entwined with capitalism and business bottom line. Think about it: fashion has become toxic to impoverished people in other countries who are working day and night to feed the fashion machine in the United States because we have to keep buying the next the new the last thing we need to fit in. The corporations get richer and we become poor in spirit because we can never attain an arrival. So we keep buying whatever we’re told. Until we say “I’m enough”…and we know that we’ve been tricked into thinking our material possessions and busy lifestyles have been foisted upon us, and we are mere peons to the corporate machine.

Bummer, eh?

There is another layer to consider.

That is the essential nature of our true selves. Not the striving self, the superficial self, the struggling self.

This is our surprise bank account that opens us into abundance and beyond enough.

The world has limits: enough

The culture defines us for its own good: enough

Our schedules are busy busy: enough

Our unique strengths: abundance

Our creative path forward: abundance

Our deepening self awareness: abundance

Our meaning making in the world that allows us to express ourselves and to be there for our neighbor’s good: abundance

You are already enough. And so much more.

Amy